I am the president, CEO, and Taube Fellow in Health Care Studies at the Pacific Research Institute, a San Francisco-based think tank.
I regularly address national and international audiences on healthcare issues. My written works have appeared in top newspapers throughout the country, and I've been interviewed on CNN, FOX News, MSNBC, and many other prominent outlets.
As a native Canadian and naturalized American, I have a unique understanding of how government-run single-payer healthcare systems actually operate -- and why such ideas are wrong for America.
I have published four books: in 2004 titled, Miracle Cure: How to Solve America’s Health Care Crisis and Why Canada Isn’t the Answer (2004), The Top Ten Myths of American Health Care: A Citizen’s Guide (2008), and The Truth About Obamacare (2010), and my latest, The Pipes Plan: The Top Ten Ways to Dismantle and Replace Obamacare (Regnery 2012).

Anti-Vaccine Activists Apparently Immune To Science

Yet another study has debunked the notion that vaccines cause autism. Late last month, a committee of 18 highly respected doctors, professors, legal experts and epidemiologists empanelled by the Institute of Medicine (IOM) reviewed more than 1,000 peer-reviewed studies and articles and found “no links between immunization and . . . autism.”

As the chairwoman of the panel, Dr. Ellen Wright Clayton, put it, “The MMR [Measles-Mumps-Rubella] vaccine doesn’t cause autism, and the evidence is overwhelming that it doesn’t.”

But for some reason, parents are increasingly skipping or delaying shots for their children. Government officials everywhere from New York to Idaho have reported that refusals to immunize are becoming more common.

This trend is deeply disturbing. Simply put, vaccines save lives. By failing to inoculate their kids, parents are allowing junk science to put the health of their children — as well as the health of those around them — at risk.

Unfortunately, the mythical link between vaccines and autism has proved remarkably resilient. And it’s all because of one measly 1998 study from British doctor Andrew Wakefield. Wakefield claimed that the MMR vaccine caused autism in the 12 cases he studied.*

In the 13 years since, Wakefield has been discredited over and over. He’s been stripped of his license to practice medicine for making up the facts at the core of his study. And myriad organizations — including The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the American Academy of Pediatrics, the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia’s Vaccine Education Center, the National Academy of Sciences, and the Food and Drug Administration — have concluded that there’s no evidence linking vaccination and autism.

But no amount of proof seems to be able to put the myth to rest. “I think this report says that the science is inadequate,” said Sallie Bernard, the head of a group that contends that vaccines and autism are linked.

Another self-described autism advocate wrote of this most recent IOM review, “I myself feel bludgeoned by reports of the definitive safety of vaccines. Trouble is, the more they say it, the less I believe it.”

Post Your Comment

Post Your Reply

Forbes writers have the ability to call out member comments they find particularly interesting. Called-out comments are highlighted across the Forbes network. You'll be notified if your comment is called out.

VSD is not an open system. It is proprietary information that remains controlled by the HMOs. Studies traditionally were carried out only by VSD member researchers and select government researchers, even though VSD was funded by taxpayers. In 2005, in response to growing complaints, the National Academies of Sciences published a report “Independent Oversight of Vaccine Safety Program Needed To Ensure Greater Transparency and Enhance Public Trust.” Recommendations were made and incremental steps were taken to open the data to researchers, who still must make a proposal which must be approved, sign all sorts of paperwork to guarantee confidentiality and agree to their terms, liase with government or VSD handlers, and receive permission before releasing or publishing data. Ja vol, kommandant, the database is open, especially to those who see nothing! VSD is set up for large scale epidemiology, but in its current iteration, and because its patient files represent only about 3% of the U.S. population, it cannot detect susceptible sub-populations. And as an added bonus, any unacceptably novel research, by the rules of the program, can be nipped in the bud.

Just yesterday at the National Vaccine Advisory Committee meeting, complaints were made by committee members that requested VSD data were not forthcoming, apparently a recurring problem. Ellen Clayton, who chaired the IOM Vaccine Adverse Event Review Committee (which just released its report 3+years in the making, wherein more than 85% of the AEs they were asked to evaluate did not have enough data to make a decision one way or the other), mentioned that despite her group’s best efforts they were unable to obtain reliable denominator data for the number of HPV vaccines administered, rather than manufactured and shipped.

Let’s say I make two million vaccines and ship them. But only two people get the vaccines. One of them has an anaphylactic reaction and the other develops systemic lupus erythema within a short time after vaccination. The adverse event rate is really 100%, but it is reported as 1 in a million. That is what’s going on, and even IOM and NVAC can’t get straight answers they need to perform an accurate analysis.

I agree with you, VAERS is a travesty, with its voluntary reporting, ancient interface and lack of followup by whoever is supposed to be contacting the people who report injuries. But by design, it is all we have. CDC estimates that it only picks up about 10% of actual vaccine injuries (which, to extrapolate, means possibly up to 200,000 AEs re: Gardasil and 1000 deaths?), and instead of defending it or trying to make it better and more accurate they have chosen to basically dismiss the data they collect.

So we are stuck with a system that satisfies nobody and does nothing to promote vaccine safety, whereby researchers stand by the accuracy of a very limited program (VSD) whose information nobody else can see, and dismiss the accuracy of a widespread but ill-managed program which data everybody can see (VAERS).

There is one very simple way to solve the problem of the VSD and VAERS. Vaccine Adverse Event reporting to the public and open system (VAERS or preferably a new, more modern system) should be MANDATORY.

If VAERS were mandatory, if physicians and other health professionals were trained to recognize vaccine injury and forced to report on every shot given whether injury occurred or not, with a convenient interface that had radio buttons, it would become a gold-standard system. Of course, that will never happen because it might cut into their blogging time, and we might learn inconvenient facts about the vaccine program.

VSD is not an open system. It is proprietary information that remains controlled by the HMOs. Studies traditionally were carried out only by VSD member researchers and select government researchers, even though VSD was funded by taxpayers. In 2005, in response to growing complaints, the National Academies of Sciences published a report “Independent Oversight of Vaccine Safety Program Needed To Ensure Greater Transparency and Enhance Public Trust.” Recommendations were made and incremental steps were taken to open the data to researchers, who still must make a proposal which must be approved, sign all sorts of paperwork to guarantee confidentiality and agree to their terms, liase with government or VSD handlers, and receive permission before releasing or publishing data. Ja vol, kommandant, the database is open, especially to those who see nothing! VSD is set up for large scale epidemiology, but in its current iteration, and because its patient files represent only about 3% of the U.S. population, it cannot detect susceptible sub-populations. And as an added bonus, any unacceptably novel research, by the rules of the program, can be nipped in the bud.

Just yesterday at the National Vaccine Advisory Committee meeting, complaints were made by committee members that requested VSD data were not forthcoming, apparently a recurring problem. Ellen Clayton, who chaired the IOM Vaccine Adverse Event Review Committee (which just released its report 3+years in the making, wherein more than 85% of the AEs they were asked to evaluate did not have enough data to make a decision one way or the other), mentioned that despite her group’s best efforts they were unable to obtain reliable denominator data for the number of HPV vaccines administered, rather than manufactured and shipped.

Let’s say I make two million vaccines and ship them. But only two people get the vaccines. One of them has an anaphylactic reaction and the other develops systemic lupus erythema within a short time after vaccination. The adverse event rate is really 100%, but it is reported as 1 in a million. That is what’s going on, and even IOM and NVAC can’t get straight answers they need to perform an accurate analysis.

I agree with you, VAERS is a travesty, with its voluntary reporting, ancient interface and lack of followup by whoever is supposed to be contacting the people who report injuries. But by design, it is all we have. CDC estimates that it only picks up about 10% of actual vaccine injuries (which, to extrapolate, means possibly up to 200,000 AEs re: Gardasil and 1000 deaths?), and instead of defending it or trying to make it better and more accurate they have chosen to basically dismiss the data they collect.

So we are stuck with a system that satisfies nobody and does nothing to promote vaccine safety, whereby researchers stand by the accuracy of a very limited program (VSD) whose information nobody else can see, and dismiss the accuracy of a widespread but ill-managed program which data everybody can see (VAERS).

There is one very simple way to solve the problem of the VSD and VAERS. Vaccine Adverse Event reporting to the public and open system (VAERS or preferably a new, more modern system) should be MANDATORY.

If VAERS were mandatory, if physicians and other health professionals were trained to recognize vaccine injury and forced to report on every shot given whether injury occurred or not, it would become a gold-standard system. Of course, that will never happen because it might cut into their blogging time, and we might learn inconvenient facts about the vaccine program.

There is a new App which could revolutionise they way vaccines are reported. At the moment it is so difficult and you have to jump through so many hoops to report an Adverse Event, 99% of people would not bother and doctors are too busy – which is why we have such an unknown situation with vaccines. Imagine if mother’s start reporting events – and the information is actually analysed and publicly available… https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/medwatcher-for-drugs-vaccines/id391767048?mt=8

“Wakefield claimed that thimerosal, a preservative containing mercury sometimes present in vaccines, caused autism in the 12 cases he studied.”

Whoops. There was never thimerosal in MMR. Wakefield hypothesized the vaccine strain measles virus caused an inflammation in the colon, which allowed “toxins” to leak out, enter the bloodstream, and travel to the brain, causing autism. The thimerosal/vaccine connection appears to be an American fabrication which came into vogue about a year after Wakefield’s fabrication.

A friend of mine, a chemist, told me it’s hard to imagine a more toxic material than thimerosal. When I told her that it’s added to childhood vaccines at a concentration of 50,000 parts per billion, she said, “that can’t be true. Nobody could do something that stupid.” Well, thats what we do. American Fabrication? How about an American Boondoggle!

A friend of mine, who is also a chemist, understands that thimerosal, at the concentrations once found in scheduled childhood vaccines, is safe. When I told him it was once found at concentrations up to 50 ppm, he said “so what?”

I was in a Target store on Sunday. They had flu shot advertisements starting in the parking lot. The shots were available for anyone 6 months and older. Their supply was 100% multi-dose vials. Their supply was 100% thimerosal containing vaccines. But hey, as a Forbes staff member, I’m sure you know that facts don’t really matter. All that matters is who controls this media outlet.